The Toxic State of Indiana - NUVO.net

Nuvo published a year-end look at Indiana's environmental health. See

The Toxic State of Indiana. Almost scary reading.

This year was either a great one for Indiana’s environment or an awful one, depending on whom you talk to and how you look at the world."

According to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the agency made significant advances in protecting human health and the environment: passing a rule to regulate mercury emissions, assessing one of the largest civil penalties in IDEM history and increasing permit fees.

Critics say that IDEM failed to take steps to address Indiana’s contribution to global climate change, put the financial health and well-being of polluters ahead of the public interest and minimized or ignored public input to the regulatory process.

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Another public relations disaster came in October when Forbes magazine published its list of America’s Greenest States [see sidebar on pg. 17].

Indiana ranked 49th.

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John Blair, president of the environmental protection group Valley Watch, based in Evansville, has been battling pollution in Southwest Indiana for three decades. “Governor Daniels and [IDEM Commissioner] Thomas Easterly are doggedly pursuing an agenda of neither environmental protection nor environmental management,” he said. “Time and again Easterly says that IDEM is an economic development tool for the state.”

Does "IDEM as an economic development tool" mean that Daniels wants us to no longer be the Mississippi of the North but the New Jersey of the Midwest?